Practical household uses of honey

PRACTICAL HOUSEHOLD
USES OF
HONEY

HOME CURES, RECIPES,
EVERYDAY HINTS AND TIPS


MARGARET BRIGGS


This edition is published by Lorenz
Books
an imprint of Anness Publishing Ltd
Blaby Road Wigston
Leicestershire LE18 4SE

www.lorenzbooks.com
www.annesspublishing.com
© Anness Publishing Ltd 2012
ISBN: 9781781140536
All rights reserved. No part of this
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in a retrieval system, or transmitted in


any way or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or
otherwise, without the prior written
permission of the copyright holder.

A CIP catalogue record for this
book is available from the British
Library.
Publisher: Joanna Lorenz
Senior Editor: Felicity Forster
Cover Design: Nigel Partridge
Production Controller: Mai-Ling
Collyer
PUBLISHER’S NOTE


Although the advice and
information in this book are believed to
be accurate and true at the time of going
to press, neither the authors nor the
publisher can accept any legal
responsibility or liability for any errors
or omissions that may have been made
nor for any inaccuracies nor for any loss,
harm or injury that comes about from
following instructions or advice in this
book.


CONTENTS
Introduction
Know Your Bees
The History Behind Honey
Bee-keeping for ‘Beeginners’
Types of Honey

The Health Benefits of Using Honey


Beauty Treatments with Honey
Culinary Uses of Honey
Drinks
Sauces and Marinades
Starters and Appetizers
Main Dishes
Cakes, Biscuits and Desserts

Fascinating Facts & Appendices
Appendix 1 — List of Honeys
Appendix 2 — Sources of Nectar in the Northern
Hemisphere


Introduction

Honey bees have been around longer
than humans. We know that thanks to
fossil evidence from 150 million years
ago. But from the earliest times man has
used this natural product to nourish,
heal, purify and protect. It is well known
that prehistoric man worshipped the sun
as the supreme giver and sustainer of
life. How many of us are aware,
however, that honey figured in the rituals
of the Babylonians and Assyrians? They

used to pour honey on the foundations
and walls of their temples. Similar
customs existed among the ancient


Egyptians and, across the other side of
the world, the Incas. Hindus and
Persians used honey in religious
services, considering it a sacred, divine
food and cleanser.
Some of these ancient rituals still exist
today in parts of Africa and honey
collection still has certain time
constraints relating to ancient beliefs.
Although early man didn’t know about
the antibacterial qualities of honey and
the benefits of eating honey for health
and energy, he knew that he liked the
sweet taste and that it was produced by
some alchemy involving bees. It was the


only sweetener readily available until
fairly recent times. Victorian cooks like
Mrs Beeton discovered that loaf sugar
was much more convenient for a number
of recipes. Apart from honey as a
sweetener, there are innumerable other
benefits to be obtained from bees,
including the production of wax for

candles and fermented honey to produce
an alcoholic drink. The word ‘mead’
and its derivations in several languages
mean various things connected with
honey. Poets waxing lyrical through the
ages have come to use the taste of honey
as a metaphor for love, and generations
of children have learned to love ‘silly
old bears’ that get stuck in sticky
situations because of it.


Cleopatra knew a thing or two about
beauty and used to bathe in honey and
milk to keep her skin smooth. Modern
beauty treatments still use honey to
enhance the appearance of the skin.
This book sets out to entertain the
interested armchair enthusiast, rather
than to inform on the finer points of beekeeping, honey types and therapies.
Having said that, I hope you will be as
fascinated as I am by the sheer


versatility of this natural product.


Know Your Bees

APOIDEA: A
SUPERFAMILY
Bees belong to the insect family
Hymenoptera, which also includes ants,
wasps and sawflies. Hymenoptera are
important to man as pollinators of wild
and cultivated plants. These insects have
always had a bad time with many
humans, who only see in them the
potential for nasty stings and ant
invasions, but they can also be parasites
of destructive insects and makers of
honey.


The 20,000 or so species of bees so far
identified are found virtually
worldwide. The only places you won’t
find them are at very high altitudes, in
Polar regions and on some oceanic
islands. The greatest number of species
is found in warm, subtropical and
tropical areas. Bees range in size from 2
mm (0.08 in) in length to a rather scary 4
cm (1.6 in) long. Many bees are black or
brown, but others incorporate bright
yellow, red and metallic green or blue.
Like other hymenoptera, bees have four
wings and a narrow waist that separates
the abdomen from the thorax. The mouth

is modified to make it a sucking type.
The egg-laying organ, or ovipositor, is


often very long and is modified for
piercing, sawing or stinging. The sex of
the insect is dependent upon whether the
egg was fertilized: if fertilized, they
become female and if unfertilized they
remain male. Most bees have
specialized, feathery body hairs to help
with the collection of pollen.
There are 11 families of bees,
distinguished by subtle differences in
wing veins and by the structure of the
mouth and other minor characteristics.
The bees in each family have other
distinguishing features, including body
hair, the length of the tongue, and the
form of pollen-carrying equipment.


CELLOPHANE BEES are fairly hairless
bees with short, forked tongues. They
look more like wasps than bees and are
considered the most primitive bees.
They line their nest tunnels and
chambers for the young with a secretion
that hardens into a cellophane-like skin.
They carry pollen on leg hairs or

internally in a stomach-like crop.
MINING BEES make soil nests of many
branching chambers, each ending in one
or more cells. They can be solitary or
communal, living in separate nests but
close to each other. They carry pollen on
body and leg hairs.
LEAFCUTTER BEES and MASONRY
BEES belong to a family of long-tongued
bees that have pollen-carrying hairs on


the underside of the abdomen. Some are
used in agriculture to pollinate crops.
SWEAT BEES are generally small, darkcoloured bees with little hair. They
usually nest in the ground but may live in
societies in which related bees help
each other. Pollen is carried on brushy
areas near the base of the legs and on
body hairs.
DIGGER and CARPENTER BEES are
fast-flying and may nest in the ground on
their own or in dense clusters. They are
excellent pollinators of many plants.
Carpenter bees nest in plant stems. Some
can excavate burrows in solid wood.
They range in size from 0.6 cm (0.2 in)
to 2.5 cm (1 in) in length and are darkish
green and blue in colour.

HONEY BEES and their close relatives
are the most familiar bees. These bees
make intricate nests and live in complex
societies. The pollen-carrying structure
is a smooth, bristle-surrounded area on
the middle of the hind leg, known as a
pollen basket or corbicula. Close
relatives are the orchid bee, bumble bee
and stingless bee. Honey bees and
stingless bees commonly hoard large
quantities of honey which has, for
centuries, been a characteristic exploited
by mankind.
POLLINATION
Bees, along with other hymenoptera, are
the most important pollinating insects.


Their mutual dependency with flowering
plants makes for a symbiotic
relationship, where each is benefiting
the other. Many plants cannot reproduce
without the help of a specific species of
insect. Bees are dependent on pollen as
a protein source and harvest nectar as an
energy source.
Social adult females collect pollen
mainly to feed their larvae. The pollen
lost in going from flower to flower is

important to plants because some pollen
lands on the pistils or reproductive
organs of other flowers of the same
species, resulting in cross-pollination.


BEE SOCIETIES
SOLITARY BEES
Most species of bees are solitary, which
means that each female makes her own
nest. They are short-lived as adults,
having grown through the stages of egg,
lava and pupa before attaining
adulthood.
ANTHOPHORINAE
This group includes bees that nest in the
ground, often in large colonies, such as
miner bees, digger bees and cuckoo
bees. These are primitive bees and like


their relatives, the wasps, they are
solitary. Each female makes a burrow, in
which she constructs earthen chambers
for her young. Pollen moistened with
nectar or oil is deposited into individual
cells until enough food has accumulated
to provide for the larva until it reaches
full size. The female then lays an egg on
the pollen mass and seals the cell before

constructing another one.
CLEPTOPARASITIC BEES
This subgroup of parasitic or cuckoo
bees do not forage or make their own
nests but use the nests of other bee
species to provide for their young. They
invade the nests of solitary bees and


hide their eggs in the chambers prepared
by the host before the host can lay her
own eggs. The chambers are then sealed.
The young parasitic bees then prosper on
the prepared food that had been so
carefully left by the host. The other eggs
or larvae of the host are then killed by
the parasitic bees or the larvae. Female
parasitic bees don’t have pollen baskets
or pollen brushes, as they don’t need to
forage for food for their young.
SOCIAL BEES OR APINAE
This is the group that includes the social
bees, including honey bees and bumble
bees. There are also communal bees,
where several females of the same


generation use the same nest, each
making cells to house their own eggs,
larvae and pupae. Some are semi-social,

living in colonies of two to seven
worker bees with a queen. About 1,000
such species form colonies that die out
in the autumn, with only the queens
surviving the winter. Bumble bees come
into this category. The best-known
groups of social bees live in large
colonies of two generations of mothers
and daughters, with males playing no
part in the organization of the colony.
They only mate with the queens. Since
this book is about honey, the societies
described from now on relate to honey
bees.